When the American Anthropological Association announced in September that it would move its publishing apparatus from the University of California Press to Wiley-Blackwell, anthropology blogs and e-mail lists buzzed with discontent. Some advocates of open-access publishing complained that moving to a for-profit publisher seemed like a step backward. And the switch would almost certainly mean higher prices for libraries, they said, which might spark a decline in subscriptions.
"What good is the AAA to its members if its primary goal is survival, rather than the promotion and dissemination of our research?" asked Christopher M. Kelty, an assistant professor of anthropology at Rice University, on the group blog Savage Minds, when the deal was announced.
In 2008 most of the association's 22 journals have seen only slight price increases. Two of its most prominent publications, however, have become much more expensive. In 2006-7 the California Press charged $232 to institutions for American Anthropologist. Wiley-Blackwell's price is $432. And while California charged $138 for American Ethnologist, Wiley-Blackwell's price spiked to $338. "I have to wonder how relevant these journals will be when libraries start dropping the sectional journals to make up the cost of the flagships," wrote John Hawks, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, on his blog in November....
In a notably civil exchange in the February issue of Anthropology News, the association's internal newsletter, five scholars debate the merits of open access....
[Jason Cross, a graduate student at Duke University who organized the Anthropology News symposium] would like to see the association move toward a fully open-access model in which scholars (or the institutions that employ them) subsidize the cost of their own publications. But he acknowledges that his proposal raises a host of thorny questions. "Bloggers and open-access advocates like me...[are] not representative. A lot of triple-A members have never heard of this stuff...."
In 2006 the anthropology association created a new panel, the Committee on the Future of Print and Electronic Publishing, which will (among other tasks) advise the association about the potential strengths and drawbacks of open-access models. Meanwhile, some anthropologists are charging ahead with their own open-access projects. Alex Golub, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, has organized an online repository called the Mana'o Project, which invites scholars to submit theses, articles, and book-length manuscripts. The site is still in development, but it already contains works by more than 120 authors....
Mr. Kelty, of Rice, writes in the symposium that for the first time in his career, he feels some resentment when he is asked to peer- review articles. Wiley-Blackwell has "an enormous profit margin," he writes, and he wonders whether the association is receiving fair compensation for the unpaid peer-review labor that he and hundreds of other scholars provide.
The most provocative essay in the Anthropology News symposium comes from Melissa Cefkin....Instead of purchasing a few journal subscriptions as a "product," she suggests, members should view their dues as supporting a wide range of activities that support the dissemination of scholarship....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/15/2008 01:18:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
